Milton T. Burton July 23, 1947 - December 1, 2011

This is Milton's eldest son Seth. I regret to have to post on dad's blog that he passed away Thursday morning. I know that each and every person whose life he touched will miss him terribly. He so enjoyed writing his books and posting on his blog as well. Underneath his curmudgeonly exterior he was in actuality a very social person. He loved to call people to chat even if only for a minute and then he would be launching off to the next call. Keeping in touch with his friends was one of his greatest joys and I would like to express my gratitude to everyone that touched his life. The service will be Sat. Dec. 10th, 3:30 at the Tyler Primitive Baptist Church.

Back in 1988 televangelist Pat Robertson ran for president. One of the networks hired Harvard professor/former Kennedy advisor Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. as a commentator on the primaries. Robertson came to my home town, and Schlesinger tagged along in his wake. It is my belief that if anyone in the country could transcend Robertson in sheer jackassery, it is Schlesinger. Here is my take on the matter:

There were others making travel plans that day with Tyler as their ultimate destination. Two major networks were sending crews to town to augment the efforts of local affiliates, and American Broadcasting Company was sending its elite commentator, Professor Arthur M. Schlesinger to comment on the socio-historic significance of Pat Robertson’s visit. Professor Schlesinger was on the retainer of ABC News as a roving and occasional commentator on national, international and perhaps even interplanetary affairs for the New York based network.

Schlesinger, dean of the East Coast establishment liberals and Historian Extraodinair, had established his academic reputation with a series of books which proved beyond the doubt of any reasonable person that Liberalism was a divinely ordained blessing on the human race and that all Democratic Presidents (with the exception of course, being the earthy Lyndon Johnson) were noble apostles of progress, while all Republican presidents (with the exception of course, being the great Abraham Lincoln) had been little more than moronic tools for the forces-of reaction.

Professor Schlesinger taught for many years at a famous Ivy League university and had achieved the status of Exalted Adept in that ad hoc but nonetheless real fraternity of those who function in that grey wonderland, the government/higher education complex. This coagulation had been christened by one irreverent pundit "The Legion of Stratospherically, Situated Academic Honchos," and Schlesinger had well earned his membership. He had been an advisor to presidents and chairman of numerous prestigious commissions; he had headed task forces beyond the numbering of mere mortals; and he had advised congress on vast reams of crucial legislation. At one time of another he had been an unofficial governmental representative to everyone everywhere on the face of the globe, and at any given moment of time he knew absolutely everything worth knowing. He had served as Ambassador Plenipotentiary (with and without portfolio) to a plenitude of potentates both potent and impotent; he had organized international conferences and defused student rebellions; he had jetted off aboard Presidential aircraft pursuing missions of monumental import that were designed to save whole continents through the benevolence of the American tax dollar; and he had completely redefined the nature and purpose of representative government by advising congressmen that they must ignore their constituents "provincial concerns" and learn to "think globally."

In his long and productive life, Professor Schlesinger had enjoyed the unique privilege of never having committed a single intellectual error. Anyone wishing to prove this assertion needed to consult no lesser luminary than Schlesinger himself, though he would admit to having been misunderstand on number of occasions when same critic had become annoyingly convinced that something he had either written or said that seemed to mean something other than what he currently claimed that it meant.

The good Professor had been employed by the network because he was able to discourse fluently upon the political and historical significance of any event which had occurred during the entire history of human society from the very first moment of the Neolithic Revolution in 50,000 BC right on down to 3:23 P. M. Wednesday the last. He was particularly important to his employers because could discourse fluently regardless of whether or not he knew anything at all about the subject at hand. Indeed, he was at his most erudite and authoritative concerning those things about which he knew the least, and he rose to Olympian heights of certitude when pontificating upon matters of which he was totally ignorant. At age seventy and perpetually bow-tied, Professor Schlesinger was short, chubby, voluble, and prone to flatulence, but a fierce dedication to his high ideals had kept him faster than a speeding entitlement and he was still able to leap tall footnotes with a single bound. And he was coming, in all his Celestial Excellence, to Tyler, Texas, in order to philosophize upon the Pat Robertson rally for the edification and enlightenment of the American citizenry. As might be expected, he considered the famous televangelist to be a muddleheaded fascist, a fraud, and a pompous ass. Robertson in turn considered Professor Schlesinger to be a muddleheaded socialist, a fraud and a pompous ass. There is a high degree of probability that each was absolutely correct in his estimation of the other.

A Plague On Both Their Houses

As far as politics goes, I am an equal opportunity hater. I have become sick of left and right and loathe them both. Here in Texas, right wing males are invariably football-obsessed, crotch-massaging cretins who say "bidness" for "business." While watching football they like to drink Cuervo Gold for the Southwestern, tough guy image they think it projects. Once the game is over, they go out and “chase some nookie,” a commodity none of them have had more than a passing acquaintance with since about 1981.

On the left, we have an abundance of Austin liberal types who venerate the now-dead Molly Ivins, slobber over Coen brothers movies (even the bad ones), and go into a state of nirvana when describing any barbecue joint that serves food on butcher paper instead of plates (butcher paper is so-down-to-earth and egalitarian, you know). Their only real connection to Texas comes once a year when they pull on a pair of cowboy boots and go slopping out to the Willie Nelson picnic with a six-pack of Shiner slung over one shoulder and a sanctimonious aura of "progressivism" wafting about their pointed little heads. Both groups have done for this state what pantyhose did for romance.

Austin liberals also love barbecue joints run by blacks, and if the black running the place happens to be rude and grumpy, so much the better. This marks him as a true culinary artist. Occasionally, one of these individuals will discover an out-of-the-way barbecue joint run by a rude, grumpy black who also serves his wares on butcher paper. When this happens, the Austin person goes into such raptures that he dies of a syndrome know as ESO or "Endless Spontaneous Orgasm." He is then cremated and his friends hold a “non-religious-yet-very-spiritual” memorial service to "celebrate his life" at which his ashes are prominently displayed in an organic gourd. As three right wing cretins drive past, one of them says, "What's going on over there, Otis?"

Otis answers, "Aw, it ain't nothin' but a bunch of left wing faggits holdin' a funeral. Let's go do some bidness."

Tedious...